


Fan of Fiction

by otherstuff



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel is mentioned, FTM Dean Winchester, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Monster of the Week, Sam Winchester writes Fanficiton, The Winchester Gospels (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28428222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otherstuff/pseuds/otherstuff
Summary: When Dean gets hurt in a run in with a basilisk, Sam feels responsible and has to explain why.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Fan of Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> By the way, for the sake of people who don't know, THIS is what a basilisk looks like:  
>   
> Sometimes they look straight up like a cockatrice, but they're still different monsters, and neither of them look like giant snakes/legless lizards.

Hunting is a very serious profession. Other kinds of jobs required the same precision at the risk of another’s life- construction workers, surgeons, pilots- but none of them seemed to intersect so perfectly with the risk of others lives, the risk of your own life, and the need to keep learning on the job. If you met a monster you’d never seen before, you were expected to drop everything and hit the books. Luckily for Dean, he could always rely on his brother for that.

Sam was better at the research, and he seemed to know it. Rare was the complaint that he was to shoulder the burden, even more scarce than that was the demand that Dean stop watching TV or sleeping to lend a hand. Once they’d moved into the bunker, “rare” became “nonexistent.” In Dean’s world, Sam had accepted his place as the geek in their duo. He in turn was free to reap the benefits of just rushing in with the comfort that his brother’s knowledge could save him.

So it was with confidence that they split up in the woods, fanning out to search for what Sam figured to be an errant basilisk that had been killing hikers with its petrifying glare. The locals had deemed it to be an unfortunate string of accidents in the mountains where normal birds happened to pick apart hikers that died of other natural causes, such as falling off of high places. As usual, the brothers knew better.

It wasn’t too far into the musty forest Dean caught sight of a ribbon of scales. It was only there for a moment, but he was sure he’d seen the stream of turquoise catch the moonlight. He stalked forward, his hand wrapping around the disk stored in his pocket. Guns were apparently a gamble on these things, their poison being said to strike back at men who attacked it with normal weapons. Instead, they’d have to go the more “traditional” method. At least, it was Sam’s definition of traditional.

“Come on, Foghorn,” Dean laughed under his breath. “We’ve got a bucket of KFC with your name on it.”

“Ba- _ cock.” _

The low warble was purposeful, signalling that the beast was behind him. Perhaps the creature had never known to fear men. The loud noise was most likely how it had made eye contact with its previous victims. Dean, thanks to Sam’s warning, knew better, instead pulling the compact mirror from his pocket and turning that on the creature first with a laugh.

His eyes first settled on the same, scaly tail that had caught his attention prior. When he saw that tail continue to move, he squinted his eyes shut and moved back.

_ Just look at the mirror, _ he willed the beast to do as he asked, peaking one eye open just in time to see the blur of movement. The monster was scurrying towards him, and he was left with no defense other than to again squeeze his eyes shut.

He moved back, his foot catching a damp branch that bowed under his weight and brought him to the ground as the basilisk crashed into his chest.

It was cawing and crowing into the night as its talons began to tear at the arm holding the mirror, which he’d pulled over his face to further shield his eyes.

“Dean-!”

Sam’s cry cut through the air, followed by a gasp in the same voice as felt the basilisk slither from his chest. His free hand scrambled against the dirt as he tried to right himself, still blind.

“Dean, did it get you?” Sam asked.

“No no, just my jacket- you okay?”

“Yeah, just- just point the mirror at it!”

“I tried!”

There was a pause, and in a voice entirely too calm Sam asked, “What?”

“It didn’t work! Must have been bad info.”

“N- Uh, oh- okay!” Sam stuttered, the scrape of unsure feet against the underbrush signalling that he was moving toward Dean’s voice. “So what do we do?”

“I dunno- you’re the guy that read all about this stuff!”

“Should we shoot it?”

“You wanna shoot something we can’t look at?” Dean asked.

Another crow rang out, this one more distant, and Dean dared open his eyes for a brief moment to glance around the clearing.

The basilisk wasn’t in sight.

“Doesn’t look like it knows what to do when there’s two of us- let’s just head back to the car, we can figure this out t-” Dean tripped again, this time falling forward and barely reaching both hands out in time to break his fall on a particularly rocky patch of forest floor.

Under the dank smell of rotting leaves and natural decay, he smelled something  _ acrid  _ and  _ burning.  _ There wasn’t any time to focus on that now, Sam’s hand patting on his lower back at first before running up his flank to eventually help him up.

He mumbled a thank you and stood again on unsure legs only to his when Sam’s hand found the one that had been holding the mirror. The mirror was gone now, having split into several pieces when it met the rock and fell out of its compact. Now it dug into his palm, bringing him to clench his jaw.

_ “Son of a bitch.” _

“What is that- is it venom?”

“No, Sammy, it’s my blood.”

“You said it didn’t get you-!”

“It didn’t. I’ll explain once we don’t have to worry about getting killed by a demonic Tweety Bird.”

Sam seemed to swallow his objections, ultimately helping Dean as they both struggled to blindly find their way back to the impala and ultimately the motel they were staying at.

That was how they ended up on the edge of a motel bed with Sam worryingly picking the glass out of Dean’s hand.

Dean was ultimately calm, nursing his flask as he tried to focus on the episode of  _ Doctor Sexy M.D.  _ Sam let him turn on without protest. About half way into the episode, Sam wrapped up with the smaller bits that were more on top of the wound and went for one of the larger pieces that was actually settled into Dean’s palm. He hissed at the pull from his hand, prompting Sam to wince and let go, the tweezers shaking in his hand around the glass.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, and Dean knew it was time to stop acting like he hadn’t noticed something was off.

“What’s your deal?”

The guilt fell from Sam’s face, replaced with something more defensive as he raised his shoulders.

“Uh, my ‘deal’ right now probably has something to do with the glass in my brother’s hand.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Dean said, screwing the lid back onto the flask with his good hand after fixing the bottle between his thighs so that he could properly sit up without spilling it all over himself. “Look, man, you’ve gotten stuff wrong on cases before. This ain’t a big deal.”

Sam let out something between a wheeze and a laugh. “I didn’t say it was.”

“No, and you didn’t have to. You’re over here cooing over me, didn’t blink when I turned on  _ ABC,  _ and then didn’t even rib me when Ellen had to talk Lori down from her breakdown over her hysterical pregnancy, or the fact that she thought said pregnancy was from a  _ ghost-” _

“I just- you’re hurt. If it keeps you from whining while I’m working on you, so be it.”

“Sam, this is a little cut,” Dean said and pulled out the rest of the shard Sam had been in the process of removing, watching his brother jump at the sharp tug. Through the flash of pain, he grunted, “See? You’ve had me sew up myself over worse while you whittle away trying to figure out what went wrong, so why aren’t you doing that?”

“I-” Sam stopped, his eyes darting down as he shook his head. “I don’t- Look, this is stupid, do you want me to make fun of your show?”

“I’d rather you poke a little fun at me and act normal instead of beating yourself up over a stupid case. Why are you so guilty, anyway? Again, this is  _ not  _ the first time one of these has gone south or we got bad intel. Happens to the best of us.”

“I know that.” At least that sounded honest. “It’s just, I thought-”

“Stop thinking. No one died, it’s fine. Not like you took a shortcut or anything.”

Sam nodded, his eyes still averted.

“Right, Sammy?”

Dean’s smile dropped when Sam still didn’t look at him.

_ “Sammy.” _

“I don’t think it’s a shortcut.”

Still not angry, Dean’s voice did grow stern in his mounting curiosity. “What’d you do? Use wikipedia?”

“No,” Sam said. “I got in contact with some informants and got my information from them.”

Dean sighed. “Then it’s Garth’s fuck up, not yours.”

“It wasn’t exactly Garth.”

Dean nodded. “Charlie, then?”

Sam’s silence continued to permeate the room.

“Who did you call, Sam?”

“I didn’t call a  _ hunter,  _ exactly.”

“Sam, so help me God, if you make me run through this Twenty Questions bullshit all night-”

Sam sighed, standing up to retrieve his laptop from the bag on the other side of the bed. Then, in a tired voice, he said, “I guess I’ll just show you.”

He opened up the piece and logged in, Dean peaking over his shoulder as he took up the abandoned tweezers to continue cleaning his wound while Sam showed him his newest contact. The screen was more in his peripheral vision, Dean not looking directly at it until he noticed that Sam wasn’t going for his email or any site or app for instant messaging. Instead, he clicked on one of his bookmarks and brought Dean face to face with-

“A  _ Supernatural  _ forum?” Dean groaned, his eyes not leaving the screen.

“I know what you’re thinking-”

“Then you know to get the fuck away from me right now.”

“Dean, it’s fine! I don’t take everyone’s word as gospel- look, these are the threads I use. These ones are for discussing lore and monsters, not the books!”

“So you go on here and you ask a bunch of random kids about our cases any time you’re stumped!?”

“No!” The defiance melted from Sam’s face as soon as it appeared. “I mean, I didn’t start out doing that.”

“Sam-!”

“I was curious, okay? I was just genuinely curious about the cult following and maybe other stuff we’d missed, like when we found out where Bella actually put the colt! Becky only knew that because she read the books, and it was really useful. Then I found this lore section, and some of these people really know their stuff. Things like the diffusion of holy water and how it’s affected by PH balance- or- or rudimentary spells and charms regarding angels that previously you couldn’t find  _ anything _ about online! Like, you couldn’t find it anywhere, but I was able to find it all here and put a lot of that warding to use on the bunker.”

“The shelter that keeps us safe from things that go bump in the night is emblazoned with stuff that could just be some made-up  _ hooey  _ you found online!?”

“No! Obviously not. I asked Cas first and he helped me test it out- that’s when I started really giving the site some merit! Then few weeks ago, when we were stumped on what we thought was a vamp hunt-”

“The uh, the chupacabra?”

“Yeah. I went to the library to do some research because I couldn’t find anything online. I had my laptop open, though, and I was waiting for the librarian to come back with the news articles I needed. Opening the site- it was a spur of the moment thing. I didn’t actually think I was gonna get anything, but I asked on a whim. They had a response for me in  _ minutes,  _ Dean, and they were right.”

“So what? One lucky guess and that’s enough to bet our  _ lives?” _

“What’s the difference between them and some other person we ask about cases, like historians or mythology professors? It’s just casting a big net really quickly.”

“A shortcut?”

Sam’s mouth clamped shut and he raised his hands as if literally grasping for words before letting them down with a sigh.

“They’ve never been wrong before.”

“What’d you even tell them, anyway? They think you’re some nut that believes in monsters? Like- do they think you’re some fourteen-year-old goth chick whose idea of a seance is google translating some latin over her mom’s tea lights?”

“No,” Sam said. “I mean- the chupacabra thing, I just asked if there was another kind of monster that did livestock mutilations, would also attack the farmers, but wouldn’t actually kill the humans in the same way. That got some people talking, and chupacabra was the first thing people spat out. Then I had people asking what I needed it for.”

“Yeah, what’d you tell them? You made an account for this thing, Mr.-” Dean leaned over to examine the screen name, “‘HumanGospel?’”

“Yeah,” Sam started. “It’s like, you know, there were the ‘Winchester Gospels’ and that was what the books are, so- it was… it was funnier at the time when it was just… me.”

His voice fell quieter and quieter the longer Dean stared him down, and he passively allowed his brother to claim the computer from his lap.

“Alright, HumanGospel- king of douchebag screen names- what  _ did _ you tell them?”

Sam opened his mouth to answer, only to sigh as Dean already clicked on one of his posts and went to the thread to read aloud.

“‘Hey guys, I’m back and working on another chapter of  _ Endless-’  _ what the fuck is that!?”

“It’s-”

Dean cut him off, already continuing. “‘I already know the monster I want to use is a kelpie, but I’m having trouble coming up with a way to actually gank the thing short of drying up its bog. I don’t know how the boys-’ Why the fuck would you call us ‘the boys?’”

“It’s what everyone else calls us to save time and-”

“Sam, this is fucking, weird.”

“Dean-”

“Are you telling me that you got that purification spell for that bog from a forum post?”

“Yes.”

“Where you claimed you needed that info for  _ fanfiction?” _

“Yes.”

“About me? Your brother?”

“About both of us, Dean,” Sam said, as if that made it any better.

“As if that makes it any better!?”

“Dean, it’s not weird, okay? It’s not even nearly as invasive as when Chuck did it. I’m not following you around and writing about you having sex, and I’m not talking about all of our brooding or letting people know our deepest fears. I just write about the hunts and things that I see. In return, I get spells on how to purify kelpie-ridden bogs or figure out what kind of monster is strong enough to smash through a wall but small enough to fit into a crawlspace. It’s a good trade, and it’s not as bad as you think it is.”

“Sam, you are whoring out your fucking  _ diary _ to people who literally don’t think you’re real.” Dean’s face washed over with realization as he returned to the list of threads. He found what he was apparently looking for- a link to  _ Endless _ by HumanGospel.

“Dean, don’t read it. I don’t even put anything personal in there.”

Pulling the laptop away when Sam made a half-hearted reach for it, he barked back, “It’s about me, Sam! I get to read it!”

Sam threw up his hands and offered a suffering sigh before pressing his face into his palms.

“Fine, give me your hand. Let me at least finish that.”

Dean grunted and turned hand over while scrolling with the other.

“What’s this stuff at the top?”

“Those are the tags, don’t worry about them.”

“‘Monster of the Week?’”

“That just means it’s about us hunting a different monster each chapter.”

“We don’t get a new hunt every week.”

“It’s just- just a figure of speech.”

Dean skimmed the other tags in the paragraph, eyes widening at the only one in the “relationships” category.

“‘Dean Winchester/Castiel (Implied)???’ What the fucked does ‘implied’ mean!?”

“People got mad and told me I should put it in the tags. I just write what happens, but a few-” he groaned, “Some  _ Wincest _ shippers felt like they were getting baited? Or something?”

Dean mock gagged and raised a hand to stop him.

“Glad these are the people you associate with.”

“I don’t want to! That’s why I thought putting the Destiel tag in there would keep them away.”

Dean nodded before shaking the idea from his head. “I guess if I had to choose between you or making out with Cas-” he cut himself off, not finishing the thought as he returned to reading. “Ugh, forget it. So these are all the things that let people find your shit?” He scrolled to the summary. “‘Part 3 of the  _ The Road Goes On _ series?’”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I had to give a summary of stuff between the books to here. Becky kept publishing, but she could only publish what Chuck had written, so I had to fill in the blanks from purgatory to here. So there’s the first part with all of the- the  _ Dick _ Stuff.”

“And the second part?”

“It’s not important.”

“I’m going to read it, Sammy.”

“It’s the year you were gone and I quit hunting, okay? It’s entirely optional to people trying to read the fic, it’s only five chapters long, but I thought people would want to know and people  _ did _ want to know, so I wrote it. It’s entirely about me so I’m telling you not to read it, okay?”

“Jesus.” Dean shook his head. “You really  _ did _ whore out your diary.”

He yelped in pain when Sam tugged out the final shard of glass.

“Are you really going to read about all of our hunts from my perspective?”

“I’m gonna skim it. Wanna see what you put down.”

“I really didn’t even include anything personal. They don’t know anything about us or how we grew up that they couldn’t find out from the books.” Sam picked his head up. “Oh shit.”

Less than turning his neck, Dean allowed his head to lazily loll to the side as he again looked at his brother. “What?”

Sam, his lips pursed shut and his eyes scrunched in what looked like pain, didn’t speak.

“Sam, what did you write about me?”

“So, you remember how we had that run in with the witch that we ended up letting go after Rowena confiscated her grimoire?”

“The one that turned you into a girl?”

“Yeah- she changed my body, yeah. That was her thing, just transformation stuff. She wasn’t killing anyone, so we let her go after we made sure she wasn’t messing with people’s lives anymore.”

“Get to the point!”

“We had this whole conversation on that case about her magic not affecting you because Rowena said it might be important to the spell’s workings, and then she told us that it only turns the body female. That’s how we figured out how to get the counter spell, so I added in the conversation without thinking it was a big deal, but it turns out that Chuck didn’t include any of that.”

A smile flickered over Dean’s lips before he schooled his expression and his voice. “Sammy, are you telling me Chuck wrote out almost five years of our life knowing people were going to read it and then almost three  _ more _ years  _ not  _ knowing people were going to read it, and he managed to not mention my lack of a dick once?”

“Yeah, it uh- it surprised me, too, when I went through and read them all. He mentions you having sex but doesn’t go into depth, and because of the thing with you freaking out over Ben and Lisa, people actually assume he’s biologically yours.”

“How the fuck does that happen!? Because I joked about him being mine?”

“Well, you did read as being kind of freaked out? Made me wonder like, what was going through your head.”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong- the kid was the  _ spitting image,  _ but I was just curious about how close he was conceived to the day she and I hooked up! It’s not like me magically knocking up a girl in college is the weirdest thing to- ugh- no no,  _ don’t  _ steer this off topic! You outed me in  _ fanfiction?” _

“I thought Chuck mentioned it, so I didn’t think to omit anything! The guy writes out our entire childhood and includes my demon powers and five of my monster girlfriends, you think he’d mention you being trans and dating dudes, but it  _ never  _ happens.”

“Until you put it out there.”

“Again- not knowing that I was the first! I didn’t even know until I started getting comments on it like- a month later. I’m so sorry.”

The smile switched back onto Dean’s face. He couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore, smothering it into the back of his free hand. “You outed me through fanfiction! That’s fucking  _ hilarious. _ I bet people don’t even believe you!”

Sam sat up a bit straighter, lips parted slightly as he tried to figure out what level of anger Dean was on, if at all.

“I- a lot of them don’t?” he managed. “I mean, I only mentioned it once and-”

Coming down, Dean let out a final sigh of laughter. “You didn’t tell Becky about this?”

“No?”

“Or Charlie?”

“No. Cas doesn’t even’t know about where I got those sigils and runes from.”

“Oh, well I don’t care about Cas knowing. He  _ RoboCopped  _ my ass. Not much he hasn’t seen already.” 

He threw in a wink, letting Sam know he was in the clear when Dean began scrolling through the fic. Truly skimming through the chapters- of which there were many- Dean eventually fixated on the “Comments” button at the bottom of the page, clicking on it with little more than a raised brow.

He let out a low whistle, “‘We love a Sassy Sammy-’ I am  _ stealing  _ that.”

“They call me sassy on every chapter,” Sam said with an eye roll. “It’s getting kind of annoying.”

“You aren’t stealing my one liners, are you?” Dean asked, already scrolling back up to look through the actual chapter. He paused to read one line. “‘Dean’s gaze softened as it landed on the renegade angel-’ well jeeze Sam, it’s hard not to think Cas and I are two seconds from making out when you write shit like that.”

Sam chuckled. “Yeah, then maybe you shouldn’t get so giddy every time he walks into the room.”

“Shut it, Sassy Sammy.” He clicked on the chapter drop down to stop aimlessly clicking through the chapters in order. “You write way too much of this shit down. I kind of get why people would want to read about our lives, but this isn’t a book or anything. Why would people want to hear about what we did after whenever the books ended? Like, you’re just some guy online. Why do people care?”

“Dunno.” Honesty left Sam’s voice hollow as he finished tying the dressings on Dean’s hand. “Some of them are nostalgic. A lot of the earlier comments are people saying that they liked the books in middle school and are just looking for fanfiction now. The other ones are just people wanting the story to continue.”

“Doesn’t it get old? Just the two of us hunting monsters all the time?”

“Not to them, I guess.”

Sam stood with a grunt, packed up the first aid kit, and put it away. By the time he was finished with that, Dean was still scrolling with a small smile on his face.

“What are you so happy about?”

“Not ‘happy,’” Dean corrected. “It’s just weird reading the stuff from when I was fresh out of purgatory, ya know? Makes me think of coming back from Hell, or even before when the biggest thing we were worried about was if dad was alive or not. It’s all kind of… well, it’s small potatoes now, is what it is. These things that were so big to us- finding dad, saving your ass when those nutjobs were hunting  _ you-  _ Hell the fucking  _ apocolypse  _ seems like it was just a thing in comparison to the shit we’ve been through.” 

He clicked onto a chapter, either ignoring the forced chuckle of agreement from Sam or not noticing it.

“Writing,” Sam started only to pause to think through what he was going to say, “it kind of makes it easier, if you wanted to try it sometime.”

Dean scoffed, shutting the laptop and sliding it to the edge of the bed before laying back down and taking the remote back into his good hand.

“Thanks but no thanks. Best to leave fanfiction and the rest to nerds like you.” He winked, settling back against the pillows with a sigh. “Besides, you’re gonna need your laptop while you’re finding out how we can really kill that basilisk.”

Sam nodded grimly before his eyes lit up. He knocked into Dean when he swung back onto the bed, his laptop once again roaring to life as he flipped it open and navigated back to the forum.

_ “Cockatrice.” _

“Watch the language.”

“No Dean- the basilisk, it shares a lot of lore with the cockatrice. I had to tell a lot of members I was sure I didn’t want to use a cockatrice but a basilisk-”

“Because we were sure the thing wasn’t flying.”

“That’s right- there weren’t any primary feathers at the scene and there were too many legs for it to be a cockatrice. But some people think a basilisk and a cockatrice are the same thing.” 

He didn’t comment on the people who had assumed he’d meant the creature from  _ Harry Potter. _

“So you gonna find a forum member who got what you meant?”

“There were a couple who definitely knew the difference, but they didn’t know a way to kill it in folklore. They were the ones that told me I shouldn’t have Sam and Dean- I- that  _ we  _ shouldn’t try to stab it or shoot it or else the poison would shoot us and stab us back. They were looking for an answer, but I went with that first response about the mirror because there was the fifth victim and we needed an answer.” He turned back to Dean. “Which… I’m still sorry about.”

“Whatever,” Dean said. “So did they give you your answer?”

“Yep- FallenAngel53-”

Dean snorted.

“She was the first person to respond, and she’s  _ probably  _ the most knowledgeable about monsters and mythology on this site.”

“Is that excluding the actual hunter? Or are you including yourself but still saying she’s smarter than you because she’s not the actual hunter getting her info from hormonal preteens on a book forum?”

“Shut up-! She says weasel musk can kill it.”

Dean shot up. “Weasel musk!? First of all, where are we gonna find that? Second of all, isn’t it uh- God, that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi guy-”

“You remember the name  _ Rikki-Tikki-Tavi _ but you can’t remember the word  _ mongoose?” _

“At least I know mongooses are the ones that kill snakes, not weasels.”

“Well, according to FallenAngel, they work pretty well against basilisks. We could probably find perfume with weasel musk in it if there isn’t a local hunting or sports place that sells organic animal scents.”

“You have fun running out in the woods on the word of a stranger,” Dean said. “I’m gonna stay here and plan your funeral.”

“Would it make you feel any better if I told you she cited her sources?”

Dean’s eyes slid over to the computer and then back to the TV.

“How would some medieval hunter even figure that  _ out?” _

“How did early hunters figure  _ anything  _ out? Probably just trial and error.”

Dean remained silent for a beat. “I guess if some peasant with the plague trying to keep his village safe from an evil chicken died to get this info to us and some forum of crazy people who have nothing better to do, we better not let it go to waste, huh?”

Sam shrugged, unable to hide his smirk as he turned back to the computer.

“You’re gonna be the one going into the sports store and asking for ‘weasel musk,’ by the way.”

“Yes, Dean.”

“And stop making people think weird shit about me and Cas.”


End file.
